David Morrill [00:00:02] Welcome to another episode of A Matter of Principals. [00:00:05] I’m your host for today, david Morrill, communications and technology director here at AWSP. [00:00:10] I’ve been here for 12.5 years, mostly because of our guest today. [00:00:14] For many of you, you’ll need no introduction. [00:00:16] You’ve been listening to the podcast recently. [00:00:19] You’ve noticed we’ve been talking with school leaders and examining their leadership through the lens of the AWSP Leadership Framework. [00:00:24] Our guest today is none other than one of the Founding fathers in the framework, former Executive Director of AWSP from 2003 to 2018, your friend and mine, Mr. [00:00:34] Gary Kipp. [00:00:35] Gary, thanks for interrupting retirement today to be here. Gary Kipp [00:00:38] I love it. David Morrill [00:00:40] So why don’t you tell us a little bit about your background, other than obviously many of our listeners will know you. [00:00:46] You were our executive director here for 15 years. [00:00:48] You’ve been retired for a little bit now. [00:00:50] So tell me how you got into education. [00:00:53] How did you get to to be at AWSP? Gary Kipp [00:00:56] I got into education probably when I switched majors in college out of civil engineering, I had a Saturday lab that they gave me for chemistry, and I had actually gone to WSU to watch football on Saturdays. [00:01:12] And so that didn’t that didn’t work out very well. [00:01:15] I always loved education. [00:01:17] And so I switched majors over to English and in education. [00:01:22] And from there, I came out and got a job initially at the middle school level, teaching and coaching. [00:01:33] And that was in Tacoma. [00:01:35] I switched to white salmon after a couple of years and was down there, while in White Salmon. [00:01:44] I did a little bit of work with the principal. [00:01:47] He encouraged me to go back, and, then you could do, graduate work, and. [00:01:54] Well, I won’t get into all the differences with the system then. [00:01:58] But we had to go back to school anyway. [00:02:00] And so a friend that I was teaching with was in the education department. [00:02:06] Education administration department. [00:02:08] So that’s where I went from there. [00:02:10] I went on to be an assistant principal and principal in Longview, at the middle and high school levels for a long time. [00:02:18] That’s where where my career was. [00:02:21] And what is it that drove you into leadership? [00:02:27] I, I think it was experiencing it at a lower level, made me realize that, I enjoyed it. [00:02:40] I enjoyed working with other adults, and I also loved kids. [00:02:47] And so that seemed to be, a normal path. [00:02:51] And, even from the get go when I first got into it. [00:02:57] An assistant principal position. [00:02:59] I did a lot of work with kids, taught leadership class, and enjoyed that a lot. [00:03:05] They transferred me to the high school. [00:03:07] Scared the hell out of me. [00:03:09] And so, first year was a little tough, but I stayed on for 20 years because I loved it so much. [00:03:18] It was a great place to be. [00:03:19] What did you love about it? [00:03:20] What was your favorite part about leading the school? [00:03:24] Watching change happen. [00:03:27] Writing along with a great staff, who were doing great things and, just being a part of, watching kids evolve from ninth graders to 12th graders and going on to bigger and better things. [00:03:45] It was a great way to spend your life. David Morrill [00:03:47] Yeah. [00:03:47] You’ve had a couple, distinguished students, and I know you had a teacher who went on to be a state superintendent, so that’s true. [00:03:56] Yeah. [00:03:56] So there you go. [00:03:56] You must have done something right. [00:03:58] Yeah. Gary Kipp [00:03:59] Well, he is a great teacher. [00:04:02] And I would say I taught him everything he knows, but sometimes I disagree with him, so maybe I won’t say that. David Morrill [00:04:10] Fair enough. [00:04:12] So when was it? [00:04:13] After 20 years. [00:04:14] When did you know? [00:04:15] It’s time to kind of hang up the keys and move into leadership at the state level? Gary Kipp [00:04:21] Well, I had been involved quite a bit with AWSP. [00:04:26] I credit AWSP with a lot of the successes that I had as a principal. [00:04:30] And then I after being a principal at the high school level, I moved down to the Evergreen District as an assistant superintendent in charge of just working with principal development. [00:04:43] And, I would have stayed there a long time. [00:04:48] Loved that district. [00:04:50] I loved the work. [00:04:52] But the position came open at AWSP, and I always thought that upon retirement, this is a place I’d love to land. [00:04:59] And I was pleasantly surprised that it was more than what I anticipated. [00:05:06] Great life here. David Morrill [00:05:07] Great. [00:05:08] Yeah. [00:05:08] It’s been, you know, like I said in the intro, I’ve been here for 12.5 years and it’s been a, a professional home. [00:05:14] It’s been a great place with good work. [00:05:17] I still remember my first time we were going to, I had to work on a weekend for a board meeting, and I thought to myself, oh, I got to spend a weekend with a bunch of principals. [00:05:26] And I didn’t realize that when principals get together and they’re with their people and they get to let loose, it’s like principal spring break. [00:05:32] It was a lot of fun, met a lot of really good people. [00:05:34] And, you realize that the connections that an association can bring, because leadership can be lonely, especially for folks in small districts. [00:05:42] And so, you know, AWSP has provided a lot for a lot of people. [00:05:46] And one of the things that we do best is AWSP Leadership Framework. [00:05:50] So you’re here today to talk a little bit about how that kind of came about. [00:05:54] And, give us a little bit more depth and a little bit of a deeper look into what it is, what it is, what it isn’t, and a little bit about the history and development of that. Gary Kipp [00:06:05] Well, I’m going to take you way back into the Wayback Machine, to talk about where AWSP framework fits in the grand scheme of a much larger evolution in education, and that is going from autonomy in the classroom to uniformity or standardization. [00:06:28] And that happened. [00:06:30] I would say it started back in the 70s, frankly. [00:06:35] Teachers during that time could teach what they want. [00:06:38] They could grade what they want. [00:06:40] They could do assessments, whatever their assessments. [00:06:42] Now over generalizing this. [00:06:44] But they had autonomy over the classroom. [00:06:47] And you look at it from a teacher’s perspective and that’s really cool. [00:06:51] If you look at it from a kids perspective, it’s not so great. [00:06:55] It’s not a good system because so often the conversations were in the in the classroom. [00:07:02] Okay. [00:07:02] Now we’re going to we’re going to talk about standard deviation. [00:07:06] And you would have some kids say, oh we already had that. [00:07:11] We had Mrs. [00:07:12] Dimple Bottom last year. [00:07:13] And we we’ve already done that. [00:07:15] That’s going to be boring. [00:07:17] And you have other kids who didn’t have it at all because there was no connected nature between teacher and teacher. [00:07:25] So the kids path is really skewed. [00:07:29] So as you move towards standardization, a lot of things had kind of fallen into place. [00:07:35] And the leadership framework is just one of the one of the natural byproducts, frankly, of moving towards a standardized path for kids through a system. [00:07:45] And so, PLCs, is a natural byproduct of having a system where there’s more standardization, the teachers framework, same thing. [00:07:58] The more you standardize what kids need to know and be able to do as they exit the system, the more you have to standardize the system itself. [00:08:07] And that’s what the leadership framework tended to do. [00:08:12] And as we look at its history, I would I would say that it’s one of the big changes was, No Child Left Behind, which came along in early 2000, maybe 2002 or 3. [00:08:28] I don’t remember exactly when that was. [00:08:31] And that required states to have, standardized tests. [00:08:37] And the more you have standardized tests, the more you need to look backwards at the instruction and the curriculum and all of that. [00:08:44] Then a big piece came along and race to the top, which was about ten years after that. [00:08:52] And those two things triggered the evolution in my mind of the leadership framework. [00:08:59] So if you look at, what happened between those two from No Child Left Behind up to race to the top? [00:09:08] It’s about a ten year period. [00:09:10] We started seeing standardized tests. [00:09:13] And from a principles perspective, you started seeing principles being evaluated based on the results. [00:09:22] And, at that time, I was towards the end of my principal career, had done a lot in ASP AWSP and was at the central office for a little bit. [00:09:36] And Brian Barker pulled together a few of us to form a committee to look at if this is coming down the road, what are the key leverage points And as we look at the principals job that are going to be big enough in a way to say, if you work on this as a principal, you’re going to you’re going to do much better than others. [00:10:04] There was a lot of research out there, but it wasn’t condensed in that same way. [00:10:09] So we had on the committee a member of the faculty at the University of Washington. [00:10:16] We had a facilitator. [00:10:18] Marilyn McGuire was involved in that work. [00:10:22] And it was a two year project of looking at research and exploring what’s going on. [00:10:29] And and out of that came, seven basic responsibilities. [00:10:36] That’s what we called them was responsibilities, because that’s sort of what they were. [00:10:42] If you tend to these responsibilities, you’re going to eventually see greater achievement on the part of students. [00:10:49] And so that’s after we did that then. [00:10:56] During that time, a number of districts picked that up and started using it with their principals and had a few were being evaluated based on those things. [00:11:07] Not not everybody, but a few of them were. [00:11:10] And then race to the top came along and race to the top accelerated that in a significant way because, to get race to the top money, it was very competitive. [00:11:22] And Christine Gregoire was our governor at the time. [00:11:25] And, she was very interested in going after that money and what that money could, could do for us. [00:11:33] And so she came to us. [00:11:37] There were one of the, one of the, requirements of getting race to the top was having a performance based evaluation system for teachers and principals, and there were already three frameworks that were being used pretty much across the state for teachers and teacher evaluation. [00:11:58] It wasn’t codified in the same way it is now, but not a lot for principals. [00:12:04] And she came to me and said, Now I’m here at AWSP during this time. [00:12:10] And she said, do you have anything that is like that? [00:12:15] And I said, well, we do have these seven responsibilities that we think are significant. [00:12:20] And she looked at those and talk me through what they were going to do, and you know, what we saw happening with them. [00:12:30] And she said, okay, this is great. [00:12:36] We’re going to adopt this. [00:12:38] And the challenge then was we hadn’t we had built language around each one of these responsibilities, but we had not built rubrics around them. [00:12:50] And so we had to work hard to then put rubrics, rubrics connected to these so that it you could use it in a more evaluative way. [00:13:03] It wasn’t initially intended for evaluation, but you could look at it in a more evaluation based way. [00:13:09] If you looked at steps connected to it, you’re moving from one level to another. [00:13:15] You could be guided and you could actually do it on your own. [00:13:19] Looking at where do I need to go next to be better at this? [00:13:22] And so, Jean charrette, Doctor Charrette, headed up a committee to help get us rubrics around this. [00:13:31] And so we got that together, gave it to, Christine Gregoire. [00:13:40] That went to the legislature, They added criterion eight which is closing the gap. [00:13:48] And so that’s and then it went out for test runs like the other frameworks just to see how is this all going to play out. [00:14:00] But that’s sort of how how it came about. [00:14:03] It’s just it’s just a natural piece of what you need. [00:14:07] If you’re going to move from total autonomy in a classroom to, a more standardized system. [00:14:16] So this is one of the one of the pieces that that’s here in a natural way. David Morrill [00:14:22] Yeah. [00:14:22] And I think there’s there’s a great quote by Simon Sinek. [00:14:25] And it might be paraphrasing, but I think it says that, rule books tell a leader what to do when frameworks allow for creativity. [00:14:34] So even within that standardization, there’s still a lot of room for, creativity, the leader or the teacher. [00:14:40] But what the framework can allow people to do is to have that common language of leadership and kind of define what good leadership looks like. [00:14:49] The the rubrics are very clear in the progression about what it takes from one level to the next. [00:14:56] So I think that’s been really helpful. [00:14:58] And I think when you talk about that a little bit, you know, we first met because of the pep process and. [00:15:03] Yeah, at the time, you know, there was the Marzano leadership framework that was pretty uncommon around the state. [00:15:09] But some of the Marzano teacher districts had adopted that. [00:15:12] And, you know, now the AWSP Leadership Framework is pretty much the only thing that principals and assistant principals are evaluated in the state. [00:15:21] Our process was a little bit different in the state about how it looked in terms of, what the evaluation system was developed in terms of it was really made from pilot districts and a consortium of ESD 101. [00:15:35] It was really created by practitioners for practitioners. [00:15:39] Kind of like the framework was. [00:15:40] I’m going to talk a little bit about just what that process looked like in the evolution of, you know, you already hit a lot on the main points, but, you know, how how the seven responsibility is going to turn into the, the framework and trap and where you kind of see the framework now, because for some people, TPF is a four letter word. [00:16:03] You know, evaluation can sometimes, take a little bit of the shine off of what the framework was meant to do, which is to provide what leadership looks like and give something to aspire to. Gary Kipp [00:16:16] Yeah, I and I think it goes back to your quote, which I think is right on when I was in high school, I’m not going to go way back on you here. [00:16:25] But my last year in high school, I knew that I needed to go to work during the summer to have money to go off to college. [00:16:33] So I enrolled in an after school class that Boling offered. [00:16:37] And if you go through this class, then they promised you a job when you graduated from high school, and the class was, all about assembling, doors. [00:16:49] We assembled doors for 737, and that work coming out once. [00:16:56] You know what the, read about the blueprints and the various fasteners and all of that sort of thing. [00:17:02] That work is very prescriptive. [00:17:05] You do this, and then you do that, and then you do this, and it is very step by step. [00:17:11] And if you get the steps out of order, then your door is going to blow out. [00:17:17] Apparently that happened. [00:17:18] So, you can trace it right back to the guy who was doing what I used to do. [00:17:25] My point here is that that is a far cry from being a principal. [00:17:30] It’s not a step by step job. [00:17:33] It can’t be. [00:17:34] It is too many things going on, and and it’s not as sequential as that. [00:17:40] Certainly the year that you go through, you do evaluations at the end, you open school. [00:17:45] There are some pieces in a sequence, but the work itself is not so prescriptive. [00:17:51] And it’s not one of the so that’s one of the things is people feel like it is. [00:18:01] Oh, I have to I have to live within these parameters. [00:18:06] Yes. [00:18:07] But there’s a ton of creativity that good principals use inside the parameters to to get to that point. [00:18:16] If you look at what principals are doing to build culture, for example, in their in their schools, there’s a wide range of things that they’re doing and it’s not prescriptive within it. [00:18:27] It’s just that attend to this area is what that is. [00:18:32] And so that’s one of the one of the pieces. [00:18:35] The other thing is that, We found in implementation. [00:18:40] One of the pieces of steps that I left out is we got the framework, it was all squared away, and then the state added numbers to it and became it became mathematical. [00:18:51] And as soon as that happened, then some people were worried about numbers instead of the content of and the skill and the practice of the profession itself. [00:19:05] Am IA2? [00:19:06] Am IA3, am I? [00:19:07] Well, to me that that hurt us in terms of what it’s for. [00:19:14] Because if you look at the framework in one of its most creative ways, it’s before it’s used before. [00:19:22] The principle takes actions, not reflectively. [00:19:25] Principals can look ahead and say, I need to deal with this issue this year. [00:19:31] How is my how is the culture? [00:19:33] Do I need to do anything with the culture to to get ready for this. [00:19:37] And will this affect my culture? [00:19:39] What kind of data do I have about this? [00:19:43] And what kind of data do I want at the end? [00:19:45] So they can just go down all of the criteria and say, what about this criteria? [00:19:51] Criterion? [00:19:52] How well do I need to do something about that at a time? [00:19:56] And is it going to affect this in a positive and negative way as I as I move forward? [00:20:01] So using it in a planning tool is as important as using it in a reflective way. [00:20:08] At the end of the year to give it a number. [00:20:10] So, my hope is that as, as it evolves and, and we can move away a little bit from the number part of it, if that makes any sense. David Morrill [00:20:23] Yeah. [00:20:23] I think if you it’s kind of, the, the process over the results. [00:20:28] Right. [00:20:28] If you are using the framework for good process, your results will be good too. Gary Kipp [00:20:33] Exactly. David Morrill [00:20:35] You talked a little bit about the nature of leadership. [00:20:39] And so one of the things when I got to AWSP that I was excited to do was to make some videos, and in the early days, I got to tell a couple stories about some really cool programs happening across the state, and you would show the videos and ask people, okay, well, what criteria is this program? [00:20:55] Right? [00:20:56] And you didn’t make the point that leadership is not episodic and not necessarily always observable in that format. [00:21:03] Can you talk a little bit about, you know, kind of that statement and the interplay between the different criteria because there’s there’s some crossover there. [00:21:13] And so when you were coming up with the seven responsibilities and the components, talk just to me a little bit about how you decided, well, what was what do we need one for this to just cover everything, like off the top of my head looking at, you know, component 1.5 creates and sustains school culture that values and responds to the characteristics and needs of each learner. [00:21:37] Has a lot of overlap with. [00:21:38] Creates and protects identity safety, for example. [00:21:41] So how did you settle on all of those? Gary Kipp [00:21:45] I think that’s in part way it’s taken so long to develop. [00:21:51] This wasn’t a group that just sat down and and wrote this. [00:21:54] Even in one year, it is evolved as it’s lived, you know, as we reflect on it, as it’s being implemented and then get feedback from principals, that’s kind of how some of the language in there has changed over time. [00:22:10] But we broke these out when we were looking at them, so that we could explore them and, and write a little bit more about what this means. [00:22:24] So we broke them apart to analyze them, but none of them lived separately. [00:22:31] And that’s one of the differences, I think, between, say, the teachers framework, at least pieces of the teachers framework and the leadership framework, because leadership, leadership behavior cannot live isolated in any one of these. [00:22:50] So, for example, you’re not going to improve your, culture without knowing what your culture is. [00:23:01] And so you go to data to say, how do kids feel about our school? [00:23:09] How do parents feel about our school? [00:23:11] How do teachers feel about the culture that’s in our schools? [00:23:13] So that’s criterion three, but we’re dealing with criterion one. [00:23:18] And what kind of resources are you going to use to build your culture? [00:23:24] Well, that’s criterion six. [00:23:26] And so you just can’t do one without the other. [00:23:30] And and so they they interplay in a really important way, which kind of takes me back to, if you’re if you’re trying to focus on, let’s stick with culture. [00:23:46] If you’re trying to improve your culture, I would look back as a principal and say, well, how are we managing our purchasing? [00:23:57] Does that support, the community that we are looking at? [00:24:02] And what kind of data do I have about that? [00:24:05] And if I’m trying to build my culture, have I engaged the community, which is criterion six? [00:24:12] And so I would look across the various components to say, well, how are they going to affect this, that I want to do about improving the culture, because I’m not getting good feedback on what our culture is like now. [00:24:29] And I want to and I want to make it better. [00:24:32] Well, those other pieces, those other criteria can help you do that. [00:24:38] If you look at it. [00:24:39] So I’m not sure if I’m getting at your at your question, but, it’s leadership is just like that. [00:24:49] It just doesn’t happen in these in these isolated ways. [00:24:53] And so if you’re if you’re, you’re not going to build a learning culture, without good instruction and you’re not going to have good instruction if you don’t have, a framework or excuse me, you’re not going to you’re not going to improve, teaching if there isn’t a culture that supports that. [00:25:15] And the language in, in the framework talks about a learning culture, which is a little different than the culture of the YMCA. [00:25:27] You know, they have to have a culture, too. [00:25:29] Ours is focused on learning. [00:25:31] And so you’ve got to look at criterion five. [00:25:36] How am I building the skills and talents of my teachers in order to support that culture, and vice versa? [00:25:44] How does that culture support? [00:25:46] Are they talking to each other about instruction or that’s a cultural issue, and how do I build that sort of thing? David Morrill [00:25:54] Yeah. [00:25:54] As we’re recording these podcasts, you know, we are AWSP are developing these courses for, for the framework, some kind of criterion, deep dives. [00:26:04] And one of the things that I, you know, notice in criterion one is we all the culture language is in pursuit of learning. [00:26:11] Right. [00:26:11] So it all of the things are really towards the goal of learning, which I think is very focused and very powerful. [00:26:18] And it’s not just schools a fun place to be. [00:26:22] It is. [00:26:22] Are you creating a culture that is conducive and promotes student learning? [00:26:26] So I think the framework does a good job of keeping the end in mind, which is preparing kids and making sure that they are learning. [00:26:35] So this kind of question. [00:26:36] My next question for you is kind of the opposite, because you just talked about how they’re, they’re all kind of connected and you can’t have one without the other. [00:26:44] But if you had a favorite, you know, parents aren’t supposed to have a favorite child. [00:26:51] Even though I am my mom’s favorite, I’m sure. [00:26:54] Sorry, Diane. [00:26:56] What is your favorite criterion? [00:26:58] Do you have one that is, I don’t know, have a soft spot in your heart or maybe something that when you’re developing, it’s like, oh, I feel we really nailed this one. Gary Kipp [00:27:10] That’s a that’s a bad, bad question because it’s hard to answer, so I don’t like it. David Morrill [00:27:17] It is a bad question because how can you pick and you just talked about your how they are all interconnected. [00:27:23] So maybe take a minute. [00:27:24] Let’s go with the different routes. Gary Kipp [00:27:25] I will give you a shot at it. David Morrill [00:27:27] Okay. Gary Kipp [00:27:27] I would say that, if I was going to, I can’t I can’t pick it without diagnosing something about the school, because one school would need to really focus on one of these particular things. [00:27:46] Just because of what’s going on. [00:27:49] But I would say that regardless of the school, unless you had a stellar staff, that you picked all of them and you got to, you know, take any teachers that you want and you knew who they were coming in and what their skills and talents were. [00:28:09] I’d look at number five because as you start building the skills and talents of your teachers, your kids are going to have an immediate, gain an immediate benefit. [00:28:21] That’s where the learning is taking place. [00:28:24] And you really can’t do that without a culture and you really can’t do that without knowing the data? [00:28:30] And do kids feel safe in the classroom to learn? [00:28:34] So I think that, I had to go all the way back to my learning from Madeline Hunter. [00:28:44] What is good instruction? [00:28:45] What does that look like? [00:28:46] And I, I focus on that one. [00:28:48] So I’m going to say that. David Morrill [00:28:50] So maybe it was a good question after all. Gary Kipp [00:28:52] Because it was still a dumb question. David Morrill [00:28:54] Because we got right back to, I just talked about the focus on learning, and you picked criterion five and brought it right back there. [00:29:02] So, and I think the differentiation of what does the school need, right. [00:29:06] It is, the most important criteria could be whatever that school needs at that time. [00:29:12] And then you could maybe tie that into focused evaluations for comprehensive. [00:29:16] So I think maybe it was deeper than we even both realize. [00:29:19] Carrie. Gary Kipp [00:29:20] Yeah. [00:29:21] Very deep. David Morrill [00:29:22] David. [00:29:23] Well, So this one might be easier. [00:29:27] So if there were five you’re like you classes at PLU for a while. [00:29:32] Right. [00:29:33] So if you’re telling your principals here are the are your future principals and assistant principals. [00:29:38] Here are the five components that I think if these are the five that you could be distinguished in, these are the five that you could master. [00:29:46] Do you have a sense for what those five would be? [00:29:49] Or does that also kind of depend on the school and context of I mean, I’m sure some of it would depend on who is your staff, what’s your leadership team, you know? [00:29:57] Do they already have some of these skills. [00:29:59] But do you have five that you feel like are stand out a little bit just a little bit more about the others? Gary Kipp [00:30:07] I would say, I almost think of one as a kind of a prerequisite. [00:30:17] But I would pick 1 in 5, because That’s that’s the most direct impact on learning. [00:30:29] I would also pick six. [00:30:31] I don’t think in today’s world you can, you can do this work without parents and without the community. [00:30:42] I just don’t think that it’s going to happen. [00:30:46] And so engaging parents and the community in thoughtful ways about helping kids that you have together, the community has those kids, and the parents have those kids, and you have those kids all for a period of time. [00:31:02] If you’re all working together, there’s going to be better learning. [00:31:05] So I would include criterion seven and how many do I have left? [00:31:12] You’ve got pick three. David Morrill [00:31:13] You’ve got three. Gary Kipp [00:31:14] That’s five. David Morrill [00:31:14] Three left. [00:31:15] You’ve got two left. Gary Kipp [00:31:16] Okay. [00:31:19] I would I’m going to leave out number six, because I think that it’s going to almost come automatically. [00:31:28] If you’re doing a good job, then resources are going to are going to be managed effectively. [00:31:37] I would, I would probably and I’m going to lump two a little bit into culture, as a prerequisite. [00:31:47] I think I’d go with three. [00:31:50] Because I don’t think we do that enough. [00:31:53] There’s data that’s handed to us. [00:31:58] District says here’s your reading source. [00:31:59] Here are these scores. [00:32:01] I don’t think we do enough of analyzing our own data, creating, meaningful data out of the experiences that we have and using that data to influence change in others. [00:32:18] So I would think, paying attention to data is is an important thing. [00:32:28] And there was a time when I thought, back in the autonomous days, I thought, there’s no point in that. [00:32:35] But the more I thought about it, the more I think, It’s going to be important for principals to be able to defend what they’re doing against a set of. [00:32:49] I would move it away from just the word data to facts and say, what are the facts that we know about this particular thing that we’re trying to change? [00:33:01] We’re we’re looking at, well, we can get into data and all of that stuff, but I’m going to pick three. David Morrill [00:33:10] And it seems to me like that data analysis is a skill that’s a little bit outside of teaching necessarily, or leadership that it is very, you know, you have PhDs that just in data analysis and data visualization. [00:33:23] And, you know, there’s that phrase data rich, that information poor. [00:33:28] And I think there’s, you know, acquiring the right data means asking the right question. [00:33:33] And if you can tie what it is that you’re trying to learn or find out or, you know, fact gathering, like you said about your your staff, your students, your community, then you can help kind of diagnose answers and adjust course so you do get the results that you’re looking for. [00:33:50] But if you don’t know what’s happening, it’s hard to to change what you’re doing. Gary Kipp [00:33:54] Yeah. [00:33:56] Yeah. David Morrill [00:33:57] Well, any other closing thoughts for us? [00:33:59] Any other actually, about this one? [00:34:02] What about a piece of leadership advice for principals today? [00:34:05] You know, the job is still in many ways, the same. [00:34:08] Like, I look back in sometimes opening a file cabinet and I’ll see works with my predecessors here. [00:34:14] And I’m like, oh, this looks like I kind of written out last week. [00:34:17] And so we know that a lot of the same themes arise and kids are still kids. [00:34:22] And on the other hand, with technology, social media, the pandemic, I think being a principal now is a little bit different than it’s been even, you know, ten, 15 years ago. [00:34:33] We talked about accountability and maybe even more vocal parent groups. [00:34:40] What advice do you give, you know, your interns at PLU about what it takes to become a strong leader in today’s, today’s school system? Gary Kipp [00:34:50] Well, maybe it’s, aside from the things that we’ve already talked about, one of the things that I try to impress upon them is the need to connect with other principals. [00:35:03] I look back on my career, and I can. [00:35:07] I can tell you within the first, ten years of being a high school principal, and I hadn’t that was not part of my training. [00:35:17] I can point to at least ten significant things we implemented in our school that I got from another principal. [00:35:26] And so maybe my focus goes there because of my stay at AWSP. [00:35:31] But that’s one of the things that I don’t think is taught enough. [00:35:37] And principals that enjoy the life of a principal. [00:35:45] If you looked at those who answered a question saying, I love being a principal. [00:35:50] I’ll bet you the vast majority of them have a group of principals of like kinds of schools that they connect with in a professional way and a social way. [00:36:03] And so I think learning from each other, we have a lot of very creative, very strong leaders in our state. [00:36:13] And when we can tap into what they’ve created and steal it. [00:36:20] Be a good thief. [00:36:22] I think is a is an important skill set for principals as they move down their career. [00:36:31] It’s good for kids, by the way. David Morrill [00:36:33] Yeah. [00:36:33] You don’t always have to reinvent the wheel or find your own solution. [00:36:37] And so not only are you learning from each other, but that social part that you talked about. [00:36:43] Right. [00:36:43] Or leadership can be lonely, especially if you’re the only, let’s say, high school principal in your entire district. [00:36:51] Having somebody that knows what you’re going through, that’s been there, that’s walking your shoes, that can offer you feedback or they just they get it. [00:36:59] I think that part of it can be, as helpful as anything else, just to know that you’re not alone. [00:37:05] You’re not crazy. [00:37:06] Right. [00:37:07] Oh, I did do the right thing there. [00:37:09] And that other people have maybe solved some problems that you’re trying to solve right now. [00:37:13] Yeah. [00:37:14] Well, thank you, Gary. [00:37:15] You know, you’re one of the people that I feel like leave the room a little bit brighter than you found it when you walked in. [00:37:22] You’ve meant a lot to our system. [00:37:23] You’ve been taught to the leaders in the state. [00:37:25] You meant a lot to me personally and to our association. [00:37:28] So it’s been a privilege to get to work with you and to learn a little bit more about the history, creation and the story behind the AWSP Leadership Framework. [00:37:37] So that’s it for now. [00:37:38] Thanks for being here. [00:37:39] And tune in for the next one. [00:37:41] All right. [00:37:48] Okay. [00:37:48] You can just say it a couple of times. Gary Kipp [00:37:53] Criterion seven. [00:37:56] Criterion seven. [00:38:00] Criterion seven. David Morrill [00:38:04] Okay. [00:38:04] You can just say it a couple times. Gary Kipp [00:38:09] Criterion seven. [00:38:12] Criterion seven.